Dell VPLEX vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize comparison

The compared Dell Technologies and IBM solutions aren't in the same category. Dell Technologies is ranked #6 in SM , with an average rating of 5.0, and holds a 6.9% mindshare in the category. IBM is ranked #14 in SDS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Dell VPLEX

Read 18 Dell VPLEX reviews

378 Views
168 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Read 39 IBM Spectrum Virtualize reviews

355 Views
165 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Dell VPLEX

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dell VPLEX and IBM Spectrum Virtualize based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

Storage Management

May 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Dell VPLEX

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Management (6th)

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Management and Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell VPLEX is designed for Storage Management and holds a mindshare of 6.9%, down 7.8% compared to last year.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Storage (SDS), holds 1.5% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.

Storage Management

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Sayed Zuber

Sr. Storage And Backup Engineer at OMNIdata Trading, Lda.

It's an excellent solution for data mobility and disaster recovery, but the CLI can be difficult for beginners

Dell VPLEX currently requires Flash Player to access the GUI. It would be better to have a web-based HTML management interface. The encryption could also be improved. When the host writes data, it goes from VPLEX back to the physical storage. The physical storage device will do encryption or use an algorithm called Data Address Encryption. If there are vulnerabilities between the host and the storage device, you can lose your data. I suggest encrypting the data before it is sent from the host to the storage. I would also recommend using the NVM protocol in VPLEX. It still has Flash Player and a local SATA disk built into the Flash Player. You need to Flash the disk to SAS and then SATA. The NVM protocol is better.

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MD.Faisal Alam

Manager, Technical Services, IBM Storage & Backup Solutions. at Thakral

Built-in compression enhances data management efficiency

I have noticed that the technical support for software issues, such as with Spectrum Protect, needs improvement. The case logging process is efficient, but resolving software problems takes too much time. This delay can hinder customers and strain vendor relationships. For hardware issues, IBM handles them efficiently, but software-related support requires enhancement. Overall improvement in support for software cases is necessary.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Storage virtualization and geographic resilience for Metro Sans, plus a great performance improvement."

"Mobility enables us to carry out an internal migration of data."

"The best feature of VPLEX storage is its ability to consolidate storage. It also provides the highest RPO and RTOs for replication technology. VPLEX enables application mobility."

"Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract."

"Its mirroring capabilities allow for data to be mirrored across two different data centers, so if one center were to crash or fail, the other center could take over and keep everything running smoothly."

"The most valuable feature is deduplication, as we have no duplication in the snapshots."

"The capacity to migrate machines onto VPLEX is great — it's very clean. We can migrate machines and add arrays easily."

"The solution works well. It's very reliable."

"Migration from configurations where servers have storage provisioned from older SAN disk systems to newer storage systems is almost seamless using image mode migration techniques, with only a short outage of the servers."

"IBM provides exceptional technical support, which I rate as the best along with Cisco."

"I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers."

"The most valuable features are the simplicity of use, the flexibility, and the options included. I mean, it's just a big time saver."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"I like all the features, but the most impressive recently has been the introduction of IBM's Flash Core Modules. They are a form of a flash drive, but they have many more features."

"It is a single pane of glass management interface, so once the storage is allocated to SVC, they only have one place to go to manage it for everything."

"The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pros

Cons

"With Dell VPLEX, there are some bugs with Broadcom."

"The price is a problem with EMC due to the fact that it's more expensive than the other vendors."

"VPLEX's engine-based architecture is complex, so the implementation is challenging and takes more time. It's also difficult to fix hardware issues. When an appliance fails, it takes Dell EMC a long time to fix it because spare parts are in short supply."

"I would like to have site-to-site replication capability for applications."

"There can be delays in getting performance reports."

"Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure."

"VPLEX hardware migration to spare equipment in case of major disruption."

"The initial setup is complex."

More Dell VPLEX cons

"I would like to see more baseline replication and integration with the operating system between Vmware and IBMI."

"I hate I/O groups. If you start swapping I/O groups, they can be potentially risky. If they could get rid of the whole I/O group principle, the risk is not there anymore. I understand the fundamental thing about I/O groups, but they are risky."

"There are things that occur when you get to this size and capacity. We're very large, i.e., petabytes. When you get to that sheer volume of the numbers of things, it is too big for people to keep track of."

"NBME support and support for a higher Fibre Channel lengths could be improved, but those are already on the roadmap."

"t is limited in terms of a single system to eight nodes or four, what they call IO groups."

"There are big arrays now, and if a customer wants add more disks to it, you have to have another array. Adding disks to existing arrays is one of the most demanded things from our customers."

"I already discussed possible improvements with some of the guys from Hearnsley. One of our frustrations is when you go to expand volumes in a global mirror environment, you have to stop everything in order to expand. So that's one of the things."

"The Storwize port is not so stable."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"VPLEX is a little bit expensive in my personal opinion."

"We struck a great deal with Dell EMC, so for us, VPLEX was not very expensive."

"This solution came as an additional cost for the TSM package we chose."

"I think it is a good value for the price."

"It has a lot of advanced functions for a reasonable price."

"Generally the bundled licensing is more cost effective and gives flexibility to the solution. Linking into the Spectrum Suite can also be advantageous, but depends on the scale of the enterprise."

"We would like the CPU cycle to save more on the licensing costs for us."

"We have struggled with Pure Storage, but people are understanding that much of Pure has been consumer grade SSDs. Therefore, when the customer is really understands what they are getting, they realize that IBM presents the same sort of value as existing vendors."

"Do a proof of concept, if you are not comfortable jumping in, but do it."

"The entry point of pricing for this product is the most amazing price ever in the industry."

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell VPLEX?

Dell's technical support is awesome. We received instant support from EMC as long as we had an active contract.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell VPLEX?

Dell VPLEX should improve its integration and user interface and be easier to configure. Any EMX product, be it PowerMax, VMAX, or DMAX, works based on the CLI. A person has to be very good at runn...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Dell VPLEX?

We use Dell VPLEX for backend connectivity within the storage. We also use it when we want to manage redundancy for any storage.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is not an expensive product. It offers flexibility with different flavors, whether appliance-based or as software. Its costs are competitive compared to other solutions like...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

IBM could improve IBM Spectrum Virtualize by bundling Storage Scale and Storage Virtualize into a single appliance. This would provide a more appealing and cost-effective solution. Additionally, it...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Virtualize?

I primarily use IBM Spectrum Virtualize ( /products/ibm-spectrum-virtualize-reviews ) when I have different hardware from various vendors and I want them to act as a unified storage solution. It en...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM SAN Volume Control vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 38% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Dell VPLEX

Compared 29% of the time

More Dell VPLEX Competitors

VxRail vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 25% of the time

VMware vSAN vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Spectrum Scale vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 17% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs IBM Spectrum Virtualize

Compared 14% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Virtualize Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell VPLEX

June 2025

Download Dell VPLEX product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Virtualize

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Virtualize product report

Overview

Wth EMC VPLEX you can deploy next-generation virtualization architecture to enable simultaneous information access within, between, and across data centers, move applications, virtual machines, and data in and between data centers without impacting users and deliver application and data availability within the data center and over distance with full infrastructure utilization and zero downtime.

Dell Technologies

IBM Spectrum Virtualize is a dependable solution that improves data value, security, and simplicity for new and existing storage infrastructure. Proven over 12 years in thousands of deployments, its innovative virtualization capabilities help organizations achieve better data economics by supporting new workloads that are critical to their success. IBM Spectrum Virtualize software helps make new and existing storage more effective and standardizes functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

IBM

Sample Customers

Kindred Healthcare, Regis Aged Care, WeBank SpA, Panduit, Munson Healthcare

Pelephone, Sprint IT Enterprise Services

Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Broadcom, IBM and others in Storage Management. Updated: May 2025.

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